“They want to take this away from us,” he mused,”—all this. And the d—— villains want to steal her away from all this. Well, let them try.”
He turned, lifting his head to catch the low night-calls that floated from the far-away corridors of the deep wood. The forest was breathing its nocturnal song—a hushed chant, interspersed with the notes of the wild things that roamed and fed and voiced their gladness after the manner of their kind. The shrill bark of a fox sounded from nether swales, and away beyond a lynx wailed sadly like a lost child. A little way into the thicket a brood of partridges huddled, peeping with plaintive voices.
“I guess they can’t understand very well what all this means to us.”
Paisley turned and strode on through the scanty wood-fringe along the Eau shore until he came to an open spot of nearly two acres. A dim light twinkled from the window of a log-house, and a couple of dogs came forward with fierce yappings which changed to whines of welcome as they recognized the visitor. The door of the house flew open, and a woman, whose frame filled the doorway completely, sent a scolding command out to the dogs.
“David and Goliath,” she commanded, “come in here t’ once er I’ll break your no-account backs with this poker.”
“Night, Mrs. Declute,” called Paisley. “Ander in?”
“Ander,” rasped the woman, “be you hum? ’Cause if you be, Bill Paisley wants t’ know it.”
The huge form was nudged aside and Declute’s grinning face peered out into the night.
“Come right on in, Bill,” invited the lord and master. An ironwood pole leaned against the house, and on it hung a splendid specimen of buck newly killed. On the floor of the house lay a smaller deer already skinned, and now being dissected by the trapper. Three children of various sizes sat about the carcass, each munching a piece of corncake from a chubby fist.
“How’s the babies, marm?” asked Paisley, carefully stepping through and over the wide-eyed little Declutes and sitting down on a stool near the fireplace. “Ander, two deer in an afternoon ain’t such bad luck, eh?”